Matt Pryor will be releasing May Day on January 24th while on the 2012 Where’s The Band? Tour, and PropertyOfZack was able to catch up with him for a great interview. Matt and I discussed using Kickstarter to fund May Day, the recording process for the album, an extended Where’s The Band? Tour, other projects in 2012, and more. Check it out below!

May Day recorded in May, and now you’re finally gearing up to release it. Was there a reason for the extended pause in putting it out?
I was still in the middle of touring with The Get Up Kids for the world tour, which wrapped up in October,.
 
You had a busy 2011 with The Get Up Kids supporting the band’s first LP in years. Are you happy with how things with the band ended in 2011?
We did a really fun successful tour of Europe at the end of it. We ended the very last show by swimming in the Mediterranean in Barcelona. You can’t really beat that. 
 
You funded May Day by using Kickstarter and were sort of one of the first artists of your size to use the tool. Are you still surprised by how much you beat your goal by?
I’m humbled and amazed. It’s really invigorating. It makes me feel supported in a really amazing way. 
 
So many bands still use labels to fund their albums obviously, but did this process make you feel closer with fans as well?
Very much so. You have to sort of change your mindset and think of it less as “us” and them.” It’s more all of the same now. It’s kind of hard to explain, but when you work with a label you can start to think about fans of the band sort of being like “parts,” or things to be figured out. This is much more organic. It’s weird, but I think if someone wants to release music independently that it’s a really good system. 
 
Have you been using leftover money from the Kickstarter to support other parts of the album process as well?
A lot of it is going back into the manufacturing and mailing of a lot of stuff. But yes, publicity and touring as well.
 
Would you use Kickstarter again in the future?
I guess so. It was certainly a successful thing, but I don’t want to go back to the well too many times [Laughs].
 
Can you talk about the recording process for May Day?
I recorded it at home in my little studio. It’s very rough and raw sounding. Maybe not rough, but there’s a lot of homemade instrumentation on it like using objects in my office as drums and stuff like that. It was done really over a period of a year, but I had this window of time to finish it in May and I knew if I didn’t finish it then that I wasn’t going to finish it any time soon. Confidence Man was recorded in the same way as May Day.
POZ: Do you enjoy that experience for solo albums?
Mat: No [Laughs]. I’ve actually done a lot of stuff like that with a lot of the projects I’ve done other than The Get Up Kids records. We’d go to a studio to do drums or strings or horns, and then would record everything else at home and have it mixed in a studio. It’s kind of easier to work in a studio because you have a deadline because you’re paying for it by the hour. But at the same time, it’s freeing to work at home because you can have more time to work on stuff. It’s nice because you have a lot of free time, but you don’t have a deadline, so you have to find a balance. The last few New Amsterdams records and both of The Terrible Twos records were recorded in the same manner. The solo records are just way more sparse than either of those.
 
What would you say are going to be some of the larger differences between May Day to Confidence Man?
It’s not that different. It’s definitely a more angry and frustrated record. Confidence Man had to do with staying positive, and a lot of this is just sort of cathartic for me. I think if you like the first record you will like this one, it’s just a different sort of side of my personality.
 
Did you go about the writing process for this record in the same way?
My writing process is pretty much the same for all of the stuff I do, outside of The Get Up Kids, which is more collaborative.
 
A song or two from the record have been released. How has the response been?
Good, I think. 
 
You were supposed to do some low key house shows a few weeks ago that were unfortunately cancelled. Was there any reason behind that?
I had some family stuff come up that I needed to deal with. I’ll have to reschedule those.

In another few weeks you’ll be headed on on Where’s The Band? Tour, which features a different lineup than it has in the past few years. Are you excited for the changes?
I’ve never met Ace or Evan before, but I’ve been told they’re good guys. We all travel together so it’s kind of a crapshoot. I know Conley and Raneri really well and we get along really well. It’s an interesting tour; we just sit in the van and talk about music and songwriting and the universe and stuff.
 
This is really the first one of those where you’ll have new solo material to support. Will you be playing a lot of it?
I’m not going to play the whole new record, but I’ll play some of it. It’s implied by the name of the tour that I have to play some of my band songs [Laughs].
POZ: Is it frustrating at all that you’ll want to be promoting the new album, but you’re obviously going to have many Get Up Kids songs requested?
Matt: You have to play a certain amount for the people who got you to the point where you’re at. You need to play a certain amount from the record you’re trying to promote too. You then should also play a little bit that’s just something fun that you enjoy so it’s not just a job. I don’t know what those percentages are, but I’m still tweaking it [Laughs].
 
This version of the tour is much more extended from previous years. Why is this go-around longer?
I kept bringing it up because I was going to go out and support this record anyway. I was going to do a full US tour, but I wanted to make it like this. Scheduling is always difficult because it’s a bunch of people with other bands. We talked about it far enough in advance. The tour’s ending when it is because Conley has to fly to Australia for a Saves The Day tour. He’s in the thick of a touring cycle right now.
 
You’ll have a lot of the year to focus on solo stuff if you’d like. Are you hoping to do more tours?
I’ll be doing the parts of the US that we won’t be hitting on this tour. I might get overseas a little bit too. After that I’ll be taking a break from the road and stay home and hang with my kids.
 
Do you have plans to keep writing more solo stuff?
It’ll probably be a little while for that. I’ve been working on another Terrible Twos record. I started another new project too that’s sort of indie and dancier. It has a girl singer as well as me.
POZ: Is it just you two?
Matt: There are six people in the band. I put together a collective of people that I like and want to work with. It was me and Dustin, who plays guitar in New Amsterdams, but also was filling in on The Get Up Kids tour on keyboard. He and I work really well together, so we started this project and it grew from there. That’s been done for a little while and we’re just figuring out how we’re going to put it out. I’m also working on a New Amsterdams collection of best ofs/unreleased stuff. I’m working on a lot of other things. 
 
Fans were also confused by the way that The Get Up Kids sort of just ended things with multiple statements. Can you just talk about that a bit?
We were just touring for over three years now since we got back together. We needed to take a break. The band broke up because we needed to take a break and didn’t know how to. Now we know how to.